James Davis: The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

Movement caught his eye as one of the dark shapes drew closer. Waves of glimmering energy, nearly invisible, rolled and parted before the figure striding toward him. The mask appeared first, darkened eyes regarding him coldly as Anilya approached. She knelt close to him, tilting her head as she studied his weakened state. Blood seeped through his robes from the wound in his side, dripping to the floor and flowing within the runes upon runes beneath him.

The time and distance between them seemed to stretch for eons, brief and enduring, near and far all at once. His every desire rose to the surface of his mind, and he found it difficult to remain focused in the strange nexus of what was still a dormant magic. He imagined his hands caressing her shoulders, drawing her close-then her face, contorted in agony as he choked the life from her. He screamed and whispered, felt unimaginable peace and exultant anger all in the space of a few moments. The Word enveloped them in its vortex of chaos. To Bastun it seemed this was the space that existed between thought and action, the heartbeat between will and the spell it summoned.

"You mean to stop me, vremyonni?" Anilya's voice carried throughout the chamber, echoed and reverberated into a nonsense that was drowned out by the power of the Word.

He could not form an answer, each breath focused on penetrating the burning aura that boiled inside of him. Sweat soaked his robes and matted his hair to his neck and mask. His bleeding was getting worse with each pounding heartbeat, and his throat was so dry that a simple skin of water would seem a blessing from the gods. He simply stared at the durthan, struggling to breathe and to maintain his focus.

"I thought not," she said, and removed her mask. She rubbed at her eyes before returning her attention to the mazelike patterns on the floor. "Though I suspect you shall be less than helpful in unraveling the secret of this puzzle, eh?"

Puzzle to you, he thought. Nightmare to me.

She strolled, searching the runes for the pattern's beginning. Tiny motes of light drifted from her fingertips and struck the floor. Bursts of energy illuminated entire sections of the engraved spellwork. More holes appeared, more ripples and tides of distortion, but little else. Within the disturbance, Bastun caught a glimpse of metal shining through the miasma. He stared at the spot, torn between thoughts of vengeance and any hope of saving those he left behind with Serevan. In the end, both were victorious as he crawled closer to the source of his dread.

Keffrass had told him, warned him, about this moment, though he could never have known what the choice would be-or where it would be made.

"You"-he tried to speak and coughed violently, tasting blood and morbidly thankful for the moisture it brought to his lips as he continued. "You mean to go through with this?"

"Well, it would be an awful waste if I did not," she said, pacing from one series of symbols to the next, narrowing her search with painstaking precision.

He kept note of her position, a blot of wavering shadow to his right, as he pulled himself across the floor. She continued speaking and he saw her voice more than he heard it, the sound vibrating on the air around him.

"A waste, especially, of time. Over two thousand years of secrecy and unrest. The wychlaren actually thought they could hold all of this in check."

Closer now to the shining flash of steel that drew him on, Bastun suspected that time had beaten him as well. He could not know how long he had truly been inside the chamber. The unstable nature of the magic King Arkaius had wrought eroded the accuracy of his senses. Steam rose from his body as he crawled, the heat further damaging his ability to think clearly. Somewhere nearby Anilya still spoke, though he could only hear the discordant aftereffects of her words, a gibberish that helped him to maintain, kept him going.

With each gain of distance he felt time slipping through his fingers, like tiny threads being severed. He felt himself being undone, torn apart and burned alive, made ready for what was to come. There could be no regrets, no sorrow of the Magewarden, no guilt or hesitation. The thing he sought to touch understood few things about mortals and emotion, but it knew weakness and pain-and it knew hunger; it knew revenge.

It would devour any indecision, any soft thought, and destroy Shandaular anew.

Arcs of bright energy sped beneath him, Nar runes glowing an angry green while the more dominant Ilythiiri symbols radiated an aura of blackness. The light burned his eyes even as another swath of the pattern writhed and fell away, revealing a window on the dying city outside. Throngs of people ran through the streets, trying to escape the swords of the Nentyarch's soldiers. Ash and flame showered the crowded masses, cut down in splashes of violence as a massive plume of curling smoke rose from where the portal had been. Arkaius had saved as many as he could and many had escaped the fate of Shandaular, but he could not save them all and his sacrifice was not suffered by him alone.

"That is the history that will become Rashemen's future."

Anilya stood a few paces away as the window faded back to stone. Bastun pushed himself up to sit on his knees. His head swam as he looked toward the durthan, his arms limp at his sides, though the bright edge of a simple pommel lay shimmering but an arm's span away. Through half-lidded eyes he watched Anilya pace, the first signs of frustration on her face as she examined more of the patterns. The room's vortex surrounded them at the center of the chamber.

"Overrun by its enemies," Anilya continued, "left to rot. Spent and useless. Created by cowardice to stand only as piles of stone, ash, and ruin."

She turned, waving her hands over another stretch of the floor, each step leading her closer to the center of the pattern. Bastun leaned forward, stretching to reach the handle of the sword. His fingertips brushed the pommel, and his breath was stolen as Athumrani's spirit grasped at his hand. He fought the Magewarden's spirit, forcing the ghost's will to obey his own. The leather-wrapped handle was cold to the touch, a respite from the fever of the cursed ring.

As he pulled on the Breath, its blade scraped against the floor, a hollow screech of steel that disrupted the vortex of the chamber. He heard the durthan pause her low chanting and turn to face him. Fear gave him the energy he needed to lift the weapon and cradle it in his arms.

Anilya smiled, though a cruel amusement played through her eyes at what she saw. "A sword, is it? Shall you run me through? Is this what you came for?" Incredulous laughter hid behind each syllable. "You should have killed me when you had the chance-and the strength-to do so."

He could not defeat her. He knew as much long before entering the Word, had contemplated the moment she would be successful in reaching it. A part of him always knew it would come to this, and that part frightened him more than the Word itself.

The spell he needed drifted and slid through a haze of pain in his mind. The words, the gestures came slowly, bit by bit. He struggled to ignore the screaming sorrow of Athumrani, the dull ache of his bleeding wound, and the pain of each rattling breath he forced into his lungs. The strength he needed was there-scattered and hiding throughout his body, but there.

Forcing his eyes to remain open, he watched as if in a dream as shadows gathered behind the durthan. They separated and settled, forming blobs of shifting and blurry darkness, though one appeared as she had in life. The Magewarden's daughter-her name unspoken in Athumrani's ravings, lost to time-did not truly look upon him, but he imagined that she saw him through the image of her father. Her lip trembled, her eyes begged him to stop, and he felt his strength wane.